All We Left Behind

by Ingrid Sundberg

  The engine hums low, then climbs high. It feels like running. Only it’s sitting still in the motion of it. It’s stillness inside the uncertainty.

  It’s running and motion and—

  She puts her hand on top of mine.

  And I want to tell her, this—why I can’t walk away. Why I can’t ignore her. This hope in my chest—

  This is why not.

  Marion

  I drive over the hill and the road opens to the shore path where the ocean crashes against the rocks.

  We don’t say anything. We drive. We drive and there is music in the silence, the road humming, the rise and fall of his chest. There’s music behind the quietness, wind lifting light in my hair, wind lifting light in our breath.

  After an hour of driving around aimlessly, I park in front of a brick building with a line of small businesses. Blue awnings hood each window. There’s a gift shop, a hair salon, and an ice cream parlor that’s only open in the summer. The fourth shop is the reason I drove us here, it’s the only shop I know of like this. Kurt leans forward for a better look.

  “Have you been here before?” I ask, and he stares out the window before nodding. The blue awning shades a window full of guitars, and a neon sign blinks the word:

  Strings.

  “This place is still here?” he asks, hands perched on the dash. He looks at me and a smile tugs at the edge of his mouth. “Do you play the—”

  “Nope,” I interrupt. “Never touched a guitar in my life.” I open the door and look back at him. “But you play.”

  Kurt

  A bell on the door jangles and the owner behind the counter looks up. He’s got long hair and a goatee, and there are more wrinkles on his face than I remember.

  “Evening,” he says, his voice full of gravel. I nod, pretending to look at a rack so he can’t see my face and recognize me. The problem with living in a small town is there’s only one good guitar store for miles. You can’t get anything this store has unless you go to the city. Guess that’s what I used to love about it. It has everything. Mom used to call it wonderland. “Can I help you?”

  “Just looking,” I say, turning to Marion like she’s more interesting than him. The owner nods, checking his watch.

  “We’re open for another twenty. Try what ’cha like.” He motions to the room and goes back to his paperwork.

  Guitars hang from the ceiling and band posters cover the walls: Fleetwood Mac, Dusty Springfield. The whole place is like a time warp and smells of carpet desperate to be cleaned, but I like that about it. It’s real. I head for the back, where the acoustic guitars line the shelf.

  I pull one down and feel its weight. Solid neck. Light body. The strings feel good under my fingers. A radio behind the counter dribbles out an old country tune and I brush against the strings, but the twang still echoes through the store.

  Too loud.

  And at the same time, not loud enough.

  Marion leans against a rack of sheet music, chewing on her pinkie. She pulls out a Steve Winwood book from his Blind Faith days and pretends to be interested in it. I adjust for pitch, turning the knobs. Not sure I want an audience. But the shy way she waits for me to play, just giving me the space, makes my chest clench in the best possible way.

  A smile tugs my lip and my hands remember. The chords. The songs. How to fingerpick. Strum. My foot starts tapping and we have music. Music that I haven’t played in four years. Music I was sure I’d forgot.

  I don’t worry about making mistakes. I just play, and Marion doesn’t ask me about the song. She bobs her head like maybe she’s remembering the one I played her on my iPod. Only this one’s different. More raw.

  Hair falls over her face as she tilts her head, watching me. It makes me nervous, but I like her here, listening. Like someone’s supposed to hear this. I smile at her, which makes her neck go red, and we both start laughing.

  My cheeks hurt from smiling and that fist in my chest, that knot, it’s easing. I tuck my chin down and hunch over the guitar and play the song. Music fills the whole store. Mom’s music.

  When I’m finished, I walk over to Marion and put the guitar in her hands. She shakes her head and puts her arm up in protest.

  “Oh, I don’t—”

  But I move behind her.

  “Don’t worry, it’s easy,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist to show her how to hold it. I trace my fingers over hers and press them into the strings, mapping out the chord. “One, two—” Adjust her pinkie. “This one goes here. Okay, now strum.”

  She laughs nervously and brushes the strings, the sound wavering.

  “Not bad.” I laugh. “That’s a G.” My head nods against her neck and I move her hand to the next position. “Okay, this is a D7.”

  I show her the pattern of notes. Repeat them. Smell her neck and tell her to strum like she means it.

  I leave my hands on her hips and she plays the pattern on her own. It takes a few tries before she gets it, and then she laughs, rocking back into my chest when she realizes what song it is.

  “ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?” she asks.

  “It’s a classic,” I say, stepping back because I’m way too turned on by this. I move around so I’m facing her, and tell her to play it again. She repeats the phrase, slowly growing more confident. Adjusting her shoulders so she’s got room. Finding a posture that feels good.

  Raindrops start to tap on the other side of the ceiling and I close my eyes. I want everything to be like this. Rain. Music. Possible.

  The water starts to stampede and thunder claps, making me laugh. Marion slides her hand over my arm and nods to the front of the store. Right now, all I want is to take her into that rain.

  I put the guitar back and we turn the corner to see the front window streaked in pink, water flooding it as the neon sign flickers.

  “So much for snow,” Marion says, but I’m glad it’s raining. Rain feels just right.

  “Hey!” the shop owner says, and we both stop in our tracks. His brow scrunches when I look back and I see that searching look on his face, like he knows me but he isn’t sure how.

  “Aren’t you . . . ?” He squints and shakes his head, hoping I might put it together for him. That’s not going to happen. Marion glances at me curiously and I wave the man off.

  “You have a nice night,” I say, reaching for the door.

  “No, wait,” the man says. “Aren’t you Lane’s son?”

  I cough.

  I can’t believe he just said her name—out loud, like it could be anyone’s.

  “Yeah, Lane Medford. She used to come here all the time. Play songs in the back like that.” He nods to the acoustic section. “Your name is what—” The owner pinches his goatee. “Craig?”

  Lightning flashes, followed by a clap of thunder that makes all the guitars shake.

  “Kurt,” Marion says in the rumble, and I almost think the owner misses it. But then he tosses a finger in the air.

  “That’s right, Kurt.”

  Rain slams against the window and the radio crackles in search of a signal.

  “I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I was,” he continues, shoulders slumping as a frown turns over his face. “About your mum.”

  Marion’s eyes are on me. But all I can do is stare at this guy.

  “I haven’t heard one of your mom’s songs in a long time.” He nods to the back corner. “It’s nice to know you still play them.”

  I wish I hadn’t.

  He’s about to say more, but his eyes cut to Marion.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you,” he says, hitching a pair of glasses onto the end of his nose. “I hope you come back.” He grabs a stack of receipts and starts punching buttons on the register.

  I don’t look at Marion as I walk out.

  I don’t care that there’s rain.

  Marion

  Kurt stands next to my car with the rain pouring over him.

  He waits for me to unlock the door and doesn’t say
a word. I get in the driver’s seat and for a second I don’t think he’s going to get in the car at all.

  I roll down the passenger window and reach through it to grab his hand.

  “Get in.”

  Kurt

  The windshield wipers beat furiously and water floods the street. Pine trees tower on both sides of the car and Marion drives slowly. She maneuvers us past a large puddle and I grip my seat belt. The cops said if Mom had worn her seat belt that night she might have survived her accident. Of course, it wasn’t really the seat belt that was to blame.

  The rain becomes fists. The windshield turns into a sheet of water and I almost say something, but Marion pulls off the street.

  “I can’t see,” she says, and the car tilts when she finds the shoulder. She pulls the brake and cuts the engine.

  We sit. Nowhere to go.

  I turn up the heat and aim the vents toward my drenched shirt, and she turns on her hazards. The windshield floods red from the flashers blinking.

  “Did you know that man?” she asks. “At the guitar store?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know him,” I say. “We used to go to that store. That’s all.”

  I squeeze the water out of my shirt, but there’s so much it makes a puddle on my stomach.

  “Was he a good friend of your mom’s?”

  I don’t know how to answer that. They were chatty. Always talking music. I don’t know if that makes them friends. I press my shirt into the puddle to sop the water back up.

  “You can take that off,” Marion says, but she catches herself. “I mean, not like that.” Her cheeks flush and she looks out the window. “You can put it in the back.” She nods behind us. “Let it dry.” Her face is angled away from me. But after a second her cheekbone lifts with a smile. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

  Her whole neck goes pink.

  “Oh?” I can’t help but smile. “In that case . . .”

  I pull off the shirt dramatically and throw it behind us. Her ears go scarlet. I wait for her to steal a glance, but she purses her lips and deliberately stares out the window.

  “What?” I egg her on. “You’ve seen it before.”

  She shakes her head, trying her best not to smile.

  I want to lean over and kiss her neck, fish out that smile. But somehow—

  This—

  Not leaning over. Not kissing her. This, that is us, just sitting here.

  This is better.

  I wrap my arms over my chest and recline the seat. I think she looks over, but I keep my eyes on the ceiling. The rain pounds the metal above us. It pounds into the silence until all I hear are guitar songs and downpours and humming in my brain.

  “We used to play together,” I say. “Mom and me. That’s who the other guitar was in that song on my iPod.”

  I crack open the window and smell the earth outside.

  “She would have loved this rain.” I look at the road. A river of water divides the lanes. “She would have run right out in that. Into the street. She would have taken her guitar and bet on her life that nobody would come around that bend.”

  The road is empty. No one has passed us since we pulled over. It would have been a good bet.

  “That guy in the store,” I say, thinking of Mom buying strings. “He must remember us.” I think of Mom’s chipped nails plucking songs out in the back part of that room, wedged between the sheet music and the dust. “It’s nice,” I say, realizing the store owner was just trying to be kind. “That he remembers.”

  Marion’s hand slides over my shoulder and the cold of her fingers feels good.

  “My mom was an alcoholic,” I say, looking at the pavement. The water screams outside. “She got drunk. She got in her truck. She . . .”

  Rain floods.

  It floods everywhere.

  We sit for a long time in that rain-pounding silence. Her hand on me. And I keep imagining Mom’s truck barreling around that corner in front of us. I imagine myself running into the road to stop her, but Mom’s too drunk. She drives right over me. I imagine it again and again, running into the road, knowing she’s gonna hit me. But each time there’s this hope that she’ll look up in that last second and see what she’s doing.

  I put my hand over Marion’s, to keep it on my shoulder. I squeeze her fingers and something in me . . . starts talking.

  “I was the one who always cleaned her up in the morning,” I say. “I wiped the vomit from her hair. Fed her aspirin. Hummed the songs her fingers weren’t strong enough to grip her guitar with. Not Dad. Dad was always at work. It was me.

  “And I’m the one she chose to play her songs with. And writing those songs meant the whole damn world to me. It was the one time it felt like we were free. And sure, I don’t know when that bottle started showing up on that bottom step. I don’t know if she always took swigs between the songs, or during, or all through, or if it was something I only noticed when I got older. But yes, the booze was part of it. Part of what made her music—hers. Maybe I knew that. Maybe we all did.

  “All I know is that when she didn’t have the booze, she was awful. An animal, like—”

  I grit my teeth. I can’t say this out loud. Like Josie padlocked behind that door.

  “She was filled with this . . .” I ball my hands into fists, not sure how to describe it. “This rage or . . . something she couldn’t get out. Like she wanted to leave her marriage, or blame her shitty career on having kids, or that this—our life—wasn’t the one she had planned. But it was the one she was stuck with. And she kept telling me she loved me, but somehow she couldn’t get her head above it. I poured all her damn bottles into the sink but she still went out for more. That’s all she ever wanted. More. Like maybe she never wanted to get her head above it. Like maybe she wanted to drown.”

  That comes out ragged, and Marion trembles—like it strikes a chord in her. This is all confused as shit and Marion doesn’t say anything. She holds my shoulder and listens and lets me sit with this. I open the window and the rain hits my face.

  “Who does that?” I ask, and I don’t know if I’m asking Marion or God or Mom. But I ask, because I need to know. “Who chooses to drown?”

  Marion

  I squeeze my hand on Kurt’s shoulder, but the motion feels wrong.

  Mechanical.

  The rain pounds and yet this is quieter. This is more intimate, more naked, more upsetting and tender than being in that backseat with him.

  He wipes his face, and his words, his secrets—

  My hand on his skin—

  Gags me.

  I want to comfort him, but this is too vulnerable.

  I want to swallow and pull my hand away and pretend I don’t see this. Pretend I don’t know the weight of what he’s sharing with me. Stuff it in my mason jar with the dead bugs and hide it in my closet. Ignore the weight of what I cannot share with him.

  I force myself to keep my hand on his shoulder.

  Force myself to listen. To grip his shoulder.

  To swallow.

  Swallow it down.

  Kurt

  It’s still raining when I sit on the back porch step after Marion drops me off. My bare feet press into the wet scraped-away wood, where Mom’s feet used to tap.

  Out in the dark the rain drizzles against the shed and somewhere a dog barks. I want to go find that dog and bring him in out of the rain. But I can only hear his voice, far away.

  Her guitar is in my lap.

  I haven’t touched it since she went in the ground. Not once. Not even after I begged my dad not to bury it with her.

  The strings are out of tune, and it takes a little force, but I twist the knobs unstuck. My reflection gleams in the dark-red wood that looks almost black, and I only make enough noise to tune. Then I listen to the darkness and the rain.

  If Mom were here, she’d make up her own song. She’d start with one note. A single note. The first note she heard in the rain. Then she’d match it with a chord and a harm
ony, and all the other things that only music can find.

  My first note is a G.

  Not anything special. Just a simple, solid G.

  Because this isn’t Mom’s song.

  This one is mine.

  Marion

  I slump in the bay window of my bedroom and stare out at the backyard. My hair is matted damp on my neck, and I try to breathe as the rain picks up again and floods the rooftop. Raises the level of the stream, dragging the rose hips under.

  The oak tree is barely visible with the porch light, and its thousands of branches tangle—

  Wet as thick worms.

  I hear Kurt playing that song in the back of my mind. I hear him whispering his secrets and asking why one chooses to drown. How darkness can consume us. How . . .

  I cough—

  I gag.

  Like I’ve swallowed all those branches and I’m choking them down.

  The creek water squished between my toes.

  Mud in my toes as he unzipped his—

  Dirty mud in my toes.

  Dirty, dirty mud.

  Worm in my mouth.

  Kurt

  The grass in the backyard is still wet from the rain. A breeze drifts through and everything smells fresh, like rainwater and metal. I tune my guitar and I’m not sure I want to play this morning. But I want to sit here, next to that spot that was Mom’s. Take this one note at a time.

  “Was that one of Mom’s songs you played last night?”

  I turn to see Josie sitting on her windowsill. She’s in her bedroom with the window open, leaned up against the screen.

  “You heard that?”

  She nods, scratching her arm. “Yeah, it woke me up. I thought Mom was out here for a minute. Thought maybe I was dead.” She catches a scab with her nail and a glint of blood colors her skin. “But then I saw it was you. I should have known. It was too pretty, that song. That’s not how I remember Mom’s songs.”

  “No?” I ask. “How do you remember them?”